Adolfo Kaminsky risked his life as a resistance fighter forging documents and photographs during the German occupation of France, that saved the lives of more than 14,000 Jews, then took his first artistic photograph in 1944, the day after the liberation of Paris

Kaminsky was born in Argentina to a Jewish family from Russia. In 1932, when Kaminsky was seven years old, he moved with his family to Paris, where his father worked as a tailor.

In 1940, after the German invasion of France, the family house in Vire was taken by the Germans and his mother was killed by the Nazis in 1941. Aged 17, Adolfo Kaminsky entered the Resistance. At first he watched the railway station at Vire and sent messages to London about these trains. However, in 1943 his family was interned in the camp of Drancy, thanks to support from the Consul of Argentina, they were freed on 22 December 1943, and moved on to Paris.

Adolfo then worked in an underground laboratory in Paris where he passed the rest of World War II forging identity papers for Jews and people sought by the Nazis. He was introduced to the network, the Resistance group, while researching a false ID for his father. This group, made up of Jewish people from the General Jewish Union was having problems removing Waterman blue ink stains from papers. Adolfo suggested they use lactic acid, and thereafter joined the group, finally becoming responsible for the chemical forgery lab. They notably had to respond to the challenge of the invention of the watermark. Kaminsky also quickly learned photogravure under a false pretext, and set up a new lab in order to create "real-false" documents. The Kaminsky Lab became the main producer of false IDs for northern France and Benelux, although ties with other clandestine groups were discontinued, each group working as a cell.

He used to say: "Keep awake. The longer possible. Struggle against sleep. The calculation is easy. In one hour, I make 30 false papers. If I sleep one hour, 30 people will die." Over the course of the war, Kaminsky created documents that saved the lives of 14,000 Jews.

After the Liberation of Paris in August 1944, he joined the French Army and marched to Germany. He was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, and was engaged by the French military secret services, who entrusted him with making false IDs for spies sent behind the lines in order to investigate and detect the location of concentration camps before their dismantlement by the Nazis.

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/adolfo-kaminsky-paris-1944-1955/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolfo_Kaminsky
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wwii-counterfeiter-who-forged-ahead-in-the-face-of-horror/


Jacques Falck has made a documentary film about his life, Forging Identity.[12] His daughter Sarah, born in 1979, is an actress and writer who wrote a biography of her father, Adolfo Kaminsky, une vie de faussaire (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2009), which has been translated into Spanish, German, and most recently into English.

A short film about Kaminsky entitled The Forger accompanied an online New York Times article in October 2016.

The Travel Channel's show Mysteries at the Museum featured a segment on Adolfo Kaminsky in its October 12, 2017, episode.

On October 29, 2017, 60 Minutes told the story of Adolfo Kaminsky.